


fifteen years (and i'm still searching)

by hawkguy (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Feels, Clint Needs a Hug, F/M, Just Hug Everyone, Tony Feels, Tony Needs a Hug, spoilers for cap 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 04:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1455349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/hawkguy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years. Fifteen years he’d been calling this number and it had never gone wrong.  Not once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fifteen years (and i'm still searching)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HeavensArcher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeavensArcher/gifts).



> Inspired by this post on tumblr (http://littlejehan.tumblr.com/post/82426202558).

Fifteen years.

Fifteen years he’d been calling this number and it had never gone wrong.

Not once.

Someone had always picked up, but this time, the itchy feeling Clint always had before a shit mission had managed to prove itself right in the form of a robotic voice on the other end of the phone line.

“I’m sorry, this number has been disconnected…”

He curses under his breath before dialing again, his movements more urgent as he presses the buttons harder, his tired mind equating that with a higher chance of success.

This number had never been wrong before.

Never.

Not once.

“I’m sorry, this number has been disconnected…”

He slams the phone back down into its holder, the plastic thumping against the cold metal, and merges back into the crowd, an unnoticeable face among millions of others.

Only then did it occur to him that maybe, just maybe, SHIELD might be ridding itself of one of a million rather than retaining one in a million.

\-->

The terrorist cell he was supposed to have killed find him on the third day, hidden in the no longer secret perch that he’d selected.

Thankfully, years of experience (fifteen years officially, but he’d been fighting his whole damn life) serve him well, and he leaves the cavern with a few somewhat major scratches. The three men they’d sent to kill him were dead.

All in all, quite the success.

He tries the payphone again, as he has for the last two days, exactly at two-thirty in the afternoon, and considers for a second that maybe walking around with blood soaking the left leg of his pants was not the greatest idea before dialing the number again.

“I’m sorry, this number has been disconnected…”

“Damn fuckers.” He mutters, before limping to the bus stop. He has a safe house somewhere near, probably, and it probably wouldn’t have to be too safe for too long.

\-->

On the fourth day, he somehow reaches Tony.

“Hello?” The familiar voice echoes through the empty bathroom, as Clint had given up doing anything but lying on the cold tile at least twelve hours before. “Katniss?”

“Hey, buddy.” Clint grins weakly. “What’s shakin’, homeboy?”

“Barton, you alright?” He swears he hears a frown in his teammate’s voice, but decides to ignore it. The bleeding in his leg had slowed a little once he’d managed to dig out the bullet, and thankfully the first aid skills Phil had taught him (damn, don’t think about him) had served him well. “Barton?”

“Just peachy, my man. SHIELD’s shit on answering phone lines.” He chuckles. “SI’s got people. You should let ‘em borrow some to answer their damn phones.”

“Where the hell are you?” He hears a screech of metal and figures Tony is in his workshop like always.

“Budapest.” The apartment, like the city, is full of ghosts that he can’t bear to be around. What the hell was he thinking, taking a mission here without Nat? 

“Motherfucking Budapest.”

Nat hadn’t picked up her phone in days, either.

“I’m on my way, Legolas. Don’t you dare cop out on me.” Tony sounds harried in a way he usually never does, being a perfectly cocky “playboy billionaire philanthropist”. 

No, he sounds strangely human for once. People usually forget to tell Tony that. “Always showing up late to everything. Maybe even… fifteen minutes late? Stopped at Starbucks, eh, Hawkguy?”

…Scratch that.

“Yeah. Put every single shot I could in yours.” Clint rolls his eyes, wondering why even that simple movement is taking so much effort. “Even that weird wheatgrass stuff.”

“It’s nutrition, Robin Hood. But you and that dog of yours just live on frozen pizza, so you probably haven’t got an idea what that is.” Stark chuckles.

“Hey, no one disses Pizza Dog.” Everything sounds distorted, for some reason, and taking a nap never sounded more necessary. “Hey, I think I’m gonna clock out for a sec.”

“Don’t you dare, Clint, don’t you dare.”

Everything fades to black anyway and he falls asleep wondering if Nat would ever call back.

\-->

Tony finds Clint passed out on the bathroom floor of a third-rate apartment, clothing soaked with blood that Tony hoped desperately was not all his own. It would be shitty, to have to find another archer after all of this work to bring the team together. Just when he’d gotten used to Legolas’ pranks and weird habit of wanting purple things.

Damn.

“Hey, Barton.” He kneels down to nudge his teammate, grimacing as blood rubs off onto his suit from the cut on the archer’s shoulder. “You around?”

The archer doesn’t react for a split second, a split second that has fear squeezing Tony’s torso like a fist closing around him, but then his fingers twitch in a way that signals wakefulness.

“So SHIELD sent you, huh? Couldn’t spare a second for their star archer?” His voice sounds weak in a way that Tony hates, because he’s never seen Clint like this. Even after battles, he’s always chipper as hell even after getting the living crap beaten out of him.

“Clint… SHIELD…” He doesn’t know how to explain the last few days because he’s still not entirely sure what happened. He doesn’t think anyone’s sure what happened. Except maybe Natasha or Steve, but they’re not sharing. “SHIELD is… uh…”

“Is Tash okay?” He sounds like a child and Tony doesn’t know how the hell to fix it because this is Barton. Barton is a rock at the best of times and a wall without footholds at the worst and he doesn’t know how to fix himself, let alone anybody else. 

His teammate, his friend, is curled up in a ball and watching him like he’s about to swallow him whole. He’s looking at him like Tony is here to finish him off, so Tony takes off the helmet to try and ease that fear.

It seems to help a little bit, and Tony nods. “They’re fine. She and Steve both. SHIELD… isn’t a thing.”

“…They haven’t been picking up because they’re done, not ‘cause they’re leaving me?” It’s said with so much hope that Tony just wants to rip his way through time into Barton’s past and beat the life out of the people that have made his friend think that way. “Really?”

“Nat’s coming as soon as she’s free, Clint.” Tony unthinkingly puts a hand down on Clint’s shoulder before noticing the other man flinch. “We’re gonna go back stateside, just you and me, and get you patched up. Then you and Nat can hang out and have freaky sex or whatever it is assassins do when they’re unemployed.”

“Unemployed.” Clint whispers, as Tony picks him up like he would a broken piece of machinery, like he’s unbearably fragile and breakable and, at the moment, he feels like it’s fitting. “Well damn.”

\-->

Clint is in a hospital bed for the forty-third time this year when Nat comes to him.

She’s dressed oddly, even for her, in a sweatshirt she’d definitely stolen from him. 

She never steals his clothes when she’s going out in public. She pulls a chair up to his bedside and runs a hand through his hair, and he can’t stand admitting it, but her touch makes him break.

He’s crying and sobbing his way through how he thought they were gone and that nobody wanted him anymore and what am I going to do, Tash and she stares at him for a second before saying one word, one monumentally scary and important word that changes everything.

“We.” She looks at him expectantly and his eyes go wide because wow, he was not expecting that. “It’s always been you and me.”

“Yeah. We. Us. Clint and Natasha.” His words slur slightly and it comes out as a jumbled mess, “Clintasha” featuring heavily among the vomit.

“Clintasha.” She smirks. “Sounds gross.”

“Yeah. Way gross.” He echoes. “So, any ideas?”

“Stark’s got jobs for us, probably.” She looks out the window after a split second of uncertainty flashes in her eyes. His hand closes a little more tightly around her free one and she relaxes. “And there’s always the Avengers.”

“Yeah.” He nods. “We’ve really got something to protect now, huh?”

She nods back, a hesitant smile gracing her face. “You told me you’d always have my back, when you brought me in.”

“I’ll be having a lot more than your back, if you’ll let me.” He chuckles and she allows herself full blown laughter. He can think of nothing but how beautiful she is when she just lets go, and she seems to pick up on it too because she keeps going. “I don’t want to go to Budapest alone anymore.”

“Me either.” She leans down and plants a kiss on his forehead, short, sweet and discreet. Just like how she kills people. That is not a thought that Clint wants to be having, because it definitely ruins the moment and this is the moment to end all moments. “We won’t be alone anymore.”

“Promise?” He sticks his pinky out, knowing it’s childish, knowing she won’t ever promise something that she doesn’t know she can give, but she hooks hers around his and nods.

“Promise.”


End file.
